


Child of God

by AdzeHewn



Category: Empress Theresa - Norman Boutin
Genre: Gen, No Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23976538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdzeHewn/pseuds/AdzeHewn
Summary: During the 600-year sleep, termed the Siesta by Theresa's family, her youngest daughter is about to begin her training as the master of philosophy. She has an awful lot to learn about the wretched world she lives in.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	1. Big Italy to Little Italy

I’m 420, the youngest daughter of Theresa and Steve Hartley, and I’m a cute ten-year-old, or at least I look like one.  
I sit in the desolate front yard, our courtyard, on the edge of Little Washington. It casts negligible shade to the right. My brother told me the other day that nobody likes to sit out here because it’s not worth the measly shadow, but I think something about the wide-open space where people once stood is unnerving to him. I think he’s the 24th child? He’s much, much older than me. He and I barely speak, so I don’t think I could tell him from anyone else.  
Sometimes the emptiness daunts me too. I like to lean the back of my head against the cool stone and pull my veiled helmet over my eyes, then I can rest without having to look at it.  
“Hey.”  
I hear myself gasp before I feel it. 268 laughs, and I smile like a dog bares its teeth, but don’t dare to strike out at her. My older sister and closest friend snuck up on me.  
“Do you know what time it is?” I begin to pull out my watch, but she stops me. “It’s eight o’ clock. The ham is done, and I think Steve dug out some eucharist. It’s a double birthday, too.”  
“Oh,” I reply quietly, “which two?”  
She shrugs, and offers her hand to me.  
“Are they both awake?”  
“I don’t know, 17 told me that it’s one of the older boys and some other one, he was being sketchy about it so maybe they ran away.” She tells me this as we walk across the courtyard together, Mary Janes tapping against the brick.  
She looks about the same age I am, but she’s got a couple centuries on me at least. Dark green armband, our botanist. She’s come out in high-waisted canvas shorts and her tunic tucked in. I tuck my blouse into my skirt as well, to look more presentable for our annual Christmas dinner.  
Inside, my parents are already sitting in the midst of our great hall. In front of us is a long hallway, filled with solid wood tables, all heavily padded on the bottom so they don’t scuff the floor. It used to annoy me when I was little, because the chairs are heavy as well, and hard to pull out. The high roof above us is patterned in breathtaking gold and renaissance paintings of the saints who came and suffered before us. Only the best for my mother, who has already taken her seat across from father at a small table for two directly beneath the dark stone altar. I feel like I should be silent in such a holy place.  
268 and I try to get seats as close to the altar as we can. I love to stare into its swirling pillars, and if I don’t have line of sight with the altar, I’ll simply turn my head up and get lost in the ceiling. I take off my red helmet and place it under the tablecloth, which, like most of our clothes, is embroidered with golden thread.  
The stone of the building makes it much cooler than outside, but the fans aren’t hurting. Most of us stay in the cathedral because of them. Our technology is scavenged and mostly rebuilt. I see some of the older siblings using homemade phones to text each other even now, heads bowed.  
Before the food is brought out, mother stands for her speech. She keeps her pitch hair long and braided back, supernaturally young, wearing a green dress dark enough to seem black and a pallium around her waist, cinched and hanging past the dress’ hem to her ankles.  
“Good evening, children. Your father and I have been hard at work training all of you to write works of science and math unlike anything the world has ever seen, and oh boy, is it tiring! Sometimes I wish I had tattooed your numbers onto you so I could remember which is which, there are so many children to take care of! A family like this would normally require dozens of nannies, but luckily many of you are actually decades older than you look, so I can spend all of my time with the youngest. Speaking of which, happy birthday to two of you, number 17 and number 420, the youngest. The two of you are very lucky to share a birthday with the man we are here to celebrate today, Jesus Christ.  
Jesus Christ was very well known for standing up for what is right and being his actions, but he never had power like I have. Like we have. We live in the Vatican, because we are more important to the future of the world than the pope, and maybe even Christ himself, not to brag! Never to brag.  
I would also like to announce that the four hundred and twenty of you won’t be getting any new siblings. I know it has been sixteen years since I last got pregnant, and since you’re all genius level students, you might have figured out by now that this was the last one, but I just wanted to tell you all for sure. In the coming year I am going to focus on orchestrating the official rebuilding of the Library of Alexandria, an architectural feat that most people would say is impossible. Nothing is impossible if you submit to the unbending force of God! Continue to study and pray over the next year, and we will achieve things nobody has ever achieved before. Once you’re done applauding, Steve will lead us in saying grace.” She turned to her husband, who was holding his hands up, ready to start clapping. “Right, love?” He nods. He looks as much like a child as me, with his eyes turned up like that.  
I applaud her, blushing at her mention of my number. My birthday isn’t actually today, it’s three days from now, but that’s okay. I’m glad she remembered. The food is brought out in stages by some of my siblings, appointed to serve us tonight. Plenty of ham, mashed potatoes, carrots. It can be difficult to grow food nowadays, but 268 has access to the Zugzwang Board so she irrigates them just fine.  
I give one hand to 268 and another to a brother I recognize from a couple months ago. He taught me to snap my fingers. I get that sixteen is a little old to learn, but it can be hard when people make fun of you for not knowing instead of trying to teach you. I recross my legs as I whisper grace.  
The honey-tinged salt of the ham is especially striking because I don’t eat meat all that often, so I pull it off in chunks as small as I can and chew slowly. Brother is doing the same. In between bites he turns to me and says, “I heard someone’s going to prank you. Watch out.”  
“Who?” I ask back, with an empty mouth, of course.  
He avoids my gaze. “I don’t want to start a fight, I just want to let you know. They said they were going to pack all your stuff like luggage”  
“Oh. That’s fine, I can just unpack it afterwards.” I’d been dunked on harder than that before, to be honest.  
“You should get them back!” 268 chimes in.  
I shake my head and respond, “There’s no point. I wouldn’t get anything out of it.”  
As the meal winds down, some of the kids who’d been eating stand and walk out, returning moments later with baskets of eucharist. When my turn comes, I take it and lay it on the table. I understand the significance and all, but the crackers suck so much, it’s unbearable. 268 grabs it off the tablecloth. I think she just likes the feeling of eating.  
I walk off, pushing my chair back with difficulty, and go to see if my things are packed yet. I own plenty of clothes, because we’re allowed to go on scavenging trips if we want, which I’m sure would be theft if we didn’t have a holy mandate (and if the world were awake to see it happen).  
My room is deep in the bowels of the Vatican, pitch black until I turn on the small electric lamp by my bedside. As soon as I do, I gasp again. She’s sitting on my bed. Jesus Fucking Christ-pardon my French.  
“Hello, 420.”  
“Hi, Mom… How are you?”  
“Great! Merry Christmas. And happy birthday, too.” She smiles knowingly. I’ve never seen it proven that she’s psychic before, but all sorts of rumors circulate about what she can and can’t do. “I’m sure you’re wondering why I came into your room without turning the light on.”  
“Yeah… Why?”  
“I wanted to surprise you.”  
I wait for her to continue, because this seems a bit redundant. After a pause just long enough to realize that she won’t, I prod her, “Why did you want to surprise me?”  
“Because I’m going to explain to you how you fit into our great plan. Your armband, for example. It’s a simple, effective way to let you know that your purpose is to learn all there is to learn about philosophy. I will be happy to provide you with an interview once you know enough to understand what I’m talking about. This is important work, so I would like to give you something that will help you learn.”  
She reaches into the comforter conspicuously arranged next to her, and pulls out a thick book. A bible. I’m sure she knows that I’ve read this before, so it must be for sentimental reasons. I thank her profusely.  
“Can you tell me something?”  
“That depends on whether I know the answer or not, but I probably can,” replies Theresa.  
“How long is the Siesta going to last?”  
“I’m not sure, but I want to make sure you understand one thing: it’s very important that you fully apply yourself when you go away to Boston. No dilly dallying. Leave all of the sleeping people alone. You will be alone at Harvard, and there might be some philosophy there that makes no sense or doesn’t line up with the things you have already learned by living the real life here. Some people get lost in their ego or pride. Keep in mind that this book-” She pats the bible. “-The bible, has all the answers you need. It is the masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, of truth, and most importantly, actionable advice. Confucius doesn’t even come close to the bible. If you have to pick between trusting the bible and trusting a confused, mortal man, you should trust this.”  
“What do you mean, when I go to Boston? Nobody explained this to me before.”  
She smiles at me, without her eyes. “Wow! I thought you were meant to be a genius! Why else would your bags be packed?”


	2. What's in the Box

Mom’s plane has been worked on continuously by the engineers of the family for such a long time now. By this point, they’ve figured out, if lazily, how to use hover technology, and they’re trying to come up with a new look for it. I’m standing on our makeshift runway, a long side street that’s been cleared of cars. I’ve never flown before.  
Steve would be flying me out today. “Hey, kiddo,” He greeted me over the intercom. It’s a smaller plane, and I smile a bit. The sound of it is gratingly loud, though, and he drops the mic and shuffles a bit to get comfortable in the pilots seat. “You aren’t afraid of heights, are you?”  
“If I am, I don’t know yet.”  
“Alright, good enough for me. We’re going to take you out to Logan airport, and then I’ll drive you down to the dorms so you can settle in.” I nod, and he hits a couple buttons on the control panel at the front. The plane lifts itself, and my gut drops. I hold on to my seatbelt with white knuckles, and father glances over but seems to pay no mind to it. As we pull off and further into today’s clouded skies, I can see much further than I ever have before. Rome and the surrounding cities are massive, but in the distance I can see them scatter away into smaller, wild-choked towns. Soon enough we move across France, Spain- and out onto the open ocean. Every now and again there are massive, tsunami-esque waves that wash across in a straight line past the horizon.  
Without a word, father drives us into some sort of storm. The window is nothing but a grey swirl, and I can feel wind shaking the fuselage. I stop breathing, as if that will prevent the plane from being torn in half.  
“Oh, calm down, it’s fine, this baby’s tough. We’ll just run straight through.” I can see the front windshield from my seat, and it’s as useless as my window. I don’t see a radar readout anywhere. Are planes supposed to have those? I breath in shaking gasps until we punch through.  
“Thank God.”  
He laughs at me. “This is just the eye. Wait a minute.” He’s right, and we’re back into it a moment later. He’s so calm, I feel like an idiot for panicking, but I can’t stand being here. The shaking. I can’t help but imagine being ripped by pressure out of the side of the plane and into the water below.  
Eventually we leave the storm, and shortly after I fall asleep.  
I wake up when he jostles me to get out of the plane. We’re out on a real runway. Boston’s skyline is in the distance, and it looks so much colder, starker, and more metallic than home. The buildings are taller, I can tell from here. He brings me through a huge building, across linoleum tiles. It’s dark in here; the power went out many years ago. He leads me by one arm.  
He takes a car from the parking lot with a small lockpick. “Skeleton key,” he mumbles to me to excuse himself. “When they wake up they’ll be honored that one of Theresa’s children sat in their car.” True as that may be, they might never find out if their car’s hidden somewhere.  
Boston seems to be made half of steel, half of brick. When you’re in the older parts of town, you can always see the skyscrapers in the distance. “Amazing, how everyone got inside in time. Everyone listens to your mother, they know she’s no joke.”  
“Yeah,” I respond. I could swear, though, that I see shapeless mounds of blankets wrapped around a few drifters on the streets as we drive past.  
“Fu- Shoot!” He corrects himself as if I were actually ten. “Someone forgot to pull over.” There’s an SUV ahead of us, still in the middle of the street, in front of a traffic light that must’ve helped them stop before they passed out. It doesn’t work anymore. Steve plugs in the skeleton key pick and jiggles it around a little, and then opens the door and looks into their car. Then he pulls back and wretches. He puts one hand on top of the car as if to brace himself, but the metal is so hot, he flinches. Muffled cussing that I can’t make out at this distance. He walks straight into a juice-restaurant across the street and, once in the shade, steadies himself and vomits into a garbage can at the front door.  
He speed-walks back to the car, running his hands through his hair. Eyes wide, I ask him, “What was in there? Are they okay?”  
“They’re fine, they’re just asleep.”  
“You threw up! Let me see!” I pull at the handle of the back seat, but the child lock is on.  
“I’m not letting you out until you agree not to look in the car. We’re going to take the subway the rest of the way.”  
“Who’s going to drive the train?”  
“Nobody! There are no trains! We’re just going to have to walk!”  
“Then how are we taking the subway?!” I can’t help but yell back at him.  
“WE’RE GOING TO WALK ALONG THE RAIL LINES!”  
“God, okay, I’m sorry! I don’t know this stuff, I’ve never even been in this country before!”  
He falls silent on the rest of the walk to the nearby station. As we walk down the stairs to the underground, with their yellow caution tape, he pipes up. “You talk about ‘this country’ like you’re not from it. You’re American, uh-”  
“420”  
“Right. You’re American, because that’s where your parents are from and that’s what you were taught. This is your home. Don’t talk about it like you don’t know here, you’re not Italian or Vaticanese or whatever.” I don’t bother answering.  
“Your mother worked very hard to teach you about this place.” Clearly she didn’t. What was in that car? We drop down onto the rails. “These used to be electrified. The third rail would fry you. Kind of an urban legend, but it always scared us when we were kids. They’re off now, though, it’s safe.”  
“Being fried sounds good right about now.”  
It’s a long, exhausting walk, and my shoes weren’t made for this- they’re biting into the back of my heel.  
“I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’ve been cooped up with my wife for so long, and God Bless her, she knows basic stuff like that, so nobody’s needed it explained to them around the house in such a long time. You should pick up some history while you’re studying. Get around the city. Look, we’re coming up on Cambridge.”  
“Is that where we’re going?”  
“Yeah, that’s where Harvard is. You should be grateful, most kids don’t get an education like this.”  
What was in that car? We get off at a stop called Harvard and step out into a brick town square, shops all around. There’s a bus parked in the middle of the street some distance away. My father guides me away towards the school, which is across some unattended fields of grass that have somehow escaped the stranglehold of ivy out here. He asks me to sit on the steps outside while he goes further in and “finds an empty room”. I’m sure he’ll just pick some girl up out of her room and move her to the one next door, who cares at this point? He could at least let me pick the one he takes.  
Wait, there’s nothing to stop me from moving wherever I want once he leaves! I won’t have to sleep in some little corner of the cathedral. I can make the entire campus my home if I please. It hurts that they’re just dropping me off here, but I’ll make the best of it.  
“Alright, bring your stuff up here, I’m setting you up on the first floor so you don’t have to worry about the stairs.”  
“Good idea.”  
“And, just as a courtesy, here.” He hands me a sheath of paper. The cover page has a picture of an air-conditioning unit on it. Hint taken. I’ll have to fix the ones inside.


	3. Rip Van Wrinkle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 420 settles in.

Some people would say exploring Cambridge is philosophy. You’ve got to live it before you can write about it, right? So I walk along the square looking for people to observe.  
There are folks asleep in the shops. I’ve only ever seen my family and I; we’re banned from going to see any of the sleeping clergy of the Vatican, at least at my age. One of my siblings told me that laymen would look different than us, and I suppose that’s why some of the people here are from different- continents, I suppose? I find a cafe that looks like it’s got students from the school I go to. One of them has a hoodie with the name printed on it. Are they my classmates? I guess I’m not technically supposed to be going to Harvard. I’m ten or sixteen, and either way I’m young, I think. I also haven’t paid tuition or enrolled.  
The AC in here is broken, but they’re facing the shade, so no problems there. Something, though… something must’ve gone wrong, because there’s a man in the corner who seems to have shriveled. His hair is grey, and there are lines all over his face- the veins stick out of his hands and his eyes are sunken. I wish 127 had a phone, or gave me their number, because they’re one of our medical specialists and they’d probably tell me what the fuck I’m looking at.   
I ate this morning. We have little fruit bars we make with a press at home. I’m still wondering if I could get something better, though, so I go to look back in the kitchen. There’s flour everywhere, ripped open and dragged through the entire back room. Nothing’s gotten in the fridge yet, and I open it. There’s a single, terrible burst of the smell of rot, and then nothing. Even the cardboard of the egg carton has collapsed inward, eaten away at by bacteria, and nothing’s left.  
I wind up going back to the library to set myself up. The AC directions are pretty straightforward, but I need some tools-I’ll just go get them tomorrow. The dorms are hot, and I go looking for a cooler building.  
The library is massive and I swear the unit still works here. It’s so cool I can finally take off my white gloves and wring them out. They’re breathable, and the wetness against my skin stopped bothering me ages ago- I just need them to keep my arms out of the sun and to touch things that have been outside too long. There’s some sort of metal thread woven into the fingers that helps block out the heat. I leave them on a desk in the main study hall along with my helmet.  
The light in this place is strange. In the main hall, it comes in from windows above, and so long as you keep out of their berth you’re fine. There are so many smaller enclaves and warm little collections, mostly cast in dark shades of grey and brown. I can’t tell why it isn’t darker, though.  
I told myself I wasn’t going to start studying today, but when my watch reads 9, I start looking around at some of the sections they’ve got. Under a sign reading fiction, some of the books have pictures of the authors on the back. They all look older than I’m used to. That must be the word for it. One of them is even starting to approach the cafe guy.   
I wind up back at the dorm shortly after to pick up dinner. I’ve been eating things grown in our gardens my whole life, but they packed me a big box of these astronaut food baggies that I just need to pour water in. They came with iodine tablets, in case there’s no tap reserve around.  
There’s no bed back in the library, so I go into a couple of neighboring rooms to pick out comforters to bring back with me. The first one I find is down, lovely but bleached white and covered in dust by time. I pick it up, and there’s a woman sleeping underneath it, entirely expected. She’s clutching one of the old phones to her chest, her hair clinging along the side of her face. Her hair is lighter than I’ve seen before, and it makes her look like she’s been made into one of the statues we had back home, the multi-material ones. I drag her off the side of the bed onto the floor, clumsily, so that she can stay in the shade, and then take her blanket. It has the ghostly imprint of some kind of animal design on it, maybe a dog’s face. I hope she wakes up okay when the time comes, I don’t know if touching someone affects the spell on them.  
~  
I wake up at… 1 am, it says on my watch, which, by the way, is surprisingly cold against the skin- it’s always been on under something else. It’s not night outside, though. Strange.  
I reglove and find my way through the labyrinth of buildings out into the morning. Walking down the big empty center road, I scan for any sign that says “Hardware” or “Repair”. I could be walking in the complete wrong direction, I wouldn’t know better.  
A massive bird, a turkey I think, steps into the road from an alley. I’ve seen squirrels and plenty, plenty of chipmunks so far, but nothing so big as this. More of them follow, three more, two of them being a duller grey. Still very pretty, especially the one with it’s plumage out in a halo on its back. Their necks are hanging and wrinkled like the shriveled man back there. I stand still, so I don’t scare them, and notice the weighted gold bottom of my skirt swaying a little bit, so I try to hold it still against my leg. The turkeys don’t care either way, though.  
I slowly start edging towards them, and they run. Damnit. I wanted to see the feathers better. Suddenly, a fox blows past, screaming sprinting after them, bright orange. I know what that is, my mother told me what a fox looks like many times. It’s going to kill the turkeys.  
They dart through the broken glass doors of a building labeled the Collection. Three of the birds are out a moment later, one’s missing. I know I shouldn’t, but I approach the door.  
The fox is dragging the bird around by its neck, knocking over a stool in the process. The other turkeys are already gone. Once it sees me, it begins dragging the body away, towards where I guess it must live. I keep a safe distance walking after it while it slowly, methodically jerks its full jaws as it steps forward, almost like it’s swimming.  
Something eventually comes of this, at least. Its home is a dug out space beneath the road, visible from one of the lane buffers in the center under a bush, and I leave it alone while it eats beside the den. I’m more focused on the store it brought me past, which looks to have the tools I want, and it’s got a mechanical door to boot so I won’t have to force it.


	4. Fixer Upper

My fingers are covered in black grease, and I don’t want to touch anything around me. I’m not used to being dirty like this, I’ve never done handiwork before. The tools I found were slightly rusted, but they worked well enough. The problem was my incompetence. It took all day, anyways.  
I’m so tired of this astronaut food. I know it’s barely been a week, but every time I go outside I see billboards and menus plastered with faded but still captivating pictures of food I can’t have. It’s the same way with people; I’m surrounded by them, but there’s nobody here with me. I break off a piece of the hardtack bread I’ve got along with the dehydrated food into my cup of water. I found a nice mug on one of the professor’s tables, it was filled with some kind of dirty grime, maybe ancient coffee (my father drinks it). The bread still feels like dust between my teeth.  
I spin my desk’s globe with one hand, leaning in to look along the finely marked lines between countries I’ve heard of in passing a couple times. Germany is in the little cluster of countries near home. I found a book summarizing the philosophy I should learn, and a surprising number of them were German. I wonder why mom didn’t just bus me out there. Then maybe I could talk to my sister. It looks a lot closer.  
After hours of note-taking, I wind up wandering the campus, trying to find something worth doing. The dorms are the most interesting to scavenge in. I’ve never really thought about it, but my family has a strange way of living- it goes unspoken, but there’s a rule that you can’t have anything in your room that you wouldn’t be okay with your parents seeing. At least, that’s what I’ve been doing. After finding my third poorly-hidden bong in a row, though, it’s clear to me that’s not how the rest of the world works. If it’s fair to say that there is a world out there anymore. You can’t really say you’ve got a dog if he’s buried in the backyard.  
The blonde whose blanket I stole had some fun shit in her room: some old pictures of her with other people her age, probably siblings, and a box full of jewelry that seems much too old for her. I found an inhaler, which looked like a bong at first glance too, but turns out it’s for a lung disease. She’d probably be doing worse if she were awake, then. It’s not all bad; my parents had some idea what they were doing.  
I can stay up all night, so I do, wandering the streets in the barely-dimmed refracted sunlight. You can’t see them overhead, but there are diamonds somewhere in the sky making it this way- they rotate with the Earth. I don’t know what night would even be like, so I can’t say if that’s cool or not, but it would probably look beautiful if the sky ever got dark enough to see them. Stepping through broken glass doors and past displays long since fallen to threads, I’m looking for some food that doesn’t go bad, like honey.  
There’s a metal door back here, cooler than the rest. I can feel it through the gloves I’ve put back on. Inside, the smell is something like ammoniac cheese and sewage, and it’s cooler than room temperature, but nothing like the freezer at home. It looks like it was a meat cooler, at one point, but now all that remains is bile and soil on the shelves. Some colorful cardboard fragments have survived, at least. There don’t seem to be many bugs. I double up my veil in one hand and pull it over my mouth and nose. It barely muffles the stench.  
In one corner, an employee must’ve passed out back here. My mother told me all the stores closed just before the Siesta, but someone must’ve lied to her, because there’ve been customers and employees asleep just about everywhere I’ve checked. That might be their fault for not listening. I take his phone, though. It looks better off than most. As a courtesy, I also haul the rest of the folks asleep throughout the building into the cooler, to keep them safer, besides one I can’t drag even after almost a half hour of trying. I just grab a tarp from the storage shelves in the back and drape it overhead in case something happens to the roof. I’m not coming back here.  
-  
I understand now why so many of my brothers and sisters are such good engineers. I’ve been trying to rig up this- this blasphemous generator for the whole day. The phone is dead. I know it won’t work anyways when I turn it on, I just have to try. I’ll figure out the internet when I get to that.  
I fish my gloves around in a bucket full of warm water I found in a big jug in one of the far offices. This isn’t for drinking, just to wash my clothes. I can’t risk wasting iodine, I don’t think they sent me with enough. Mom doesn’t understand what it’s like out here. How did 268 survive this? Did they make her leave to come here, too? I feel like this place is untouched, why is it just me? What did I do wrong?   
Tears disturb the shifting surface of the water. I take a break and curl up next to it, wrapping my too-small body into a ball and sobbing into my white skirt. My face stings from walking around so much anyways, and I zero in on that pain as my nose and eyes leak out into my clothes. You idiot, you’re dehydrating yourself AND you’ll have to wash that again. I can barely breathe.  
Once the tempest is passed I stand up and walk, as silently as I do everything else, into one of the farther dorms. A rich international student sleeps in here, I can tell because there’s a folded-up letter in a language I can’t read in the second drawer down of her end table. Her wardrobe always interested me, because she’s a very small-framed lady and I bet I could fit into some of her clothes if I cinched them off. I wind up stealing a reddish-plaid skirt, which on her taller self probably would’ve been much shorter, but it falls halfway down my calf. It’s weighted at the bottom with some gold-plate-type situation, so it swings around when I move. I can imagine something like this in a boutique in Rome, maybe she got it there.  
More notes. I decided to take Mom’s advice and read up on some Christian theory, but it turns out there are thirty million denominations. Fucking Voltaire was easier than this. I don’t understand what my purpose here really is anymore. Am I supposed to become a greater philosopher than all of these people combined? Isn’t the entire point that there’s no right answer? I can understand engineering as a matter of science, but how can you be better at creativity than other people?  
Then again, I’m the last kid. I was probably an afterthought. “Just give her philosophy, who gives a shit, we’re abandoning her in Boston in a few years anyway.” That was mean. I know it was mean, and I feel guilty for even saying it, but it’s starting to feel like my parents left me out here to die.  
Before I go to sleep (the clock says it’s 3pm, but frankly I have no interest in adjusting my sleep schedule when night and morning are the same color), I tuck my mother’s bible in the blonde’s drawer. I’ll know its there, I go to look at her sometimes so I’ll probably see it again, but if I forget where it is… There are other copies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Certain chapters of this story will come in the form of comics instead of written works. In such cases, there will be a link to the comic instead of the normal text.


End file.
